When I got to Hot Springs, SD last evening I saw many signs for The Mammoth Site but was headed to Wind Cave so I ignored them. Today, while doing laundry and other errands, I came across the site and thought “tourist trap.” When at the laundromat I asked some locals about the site. They all said it was worth going so I did go see the site. There is an admission fee of $14.00 and you are on a self guided tour with QR codes allowing you to get more in-depth information at the stops. For your admission you are given a booklet and asked to watch a 10 minute movie on the site. I watched the video and learned a thing or two. First off the site was discovered by a real estate developer who was going to put homes on the site but while doing some excavation with a bulldozer unearthed the bones. He stopped work and eventually sold the land at his cost to a newly formed preservation group for the site. Before the discovery, we need to go back a few hundred thousand years to understand how the site was created. It seems with the Rocky Mountains and Black Hills were created there were many layers of sedimentary rock. It was when there was a sink hole in the rock having a shale side that water rose up and filled the hole. The shale on the side of the hole was slick as shale can get when it is wet. Well the animals wanted to get to the water so to drink and I am sure cool themselves. Well the shale was slick so it seemed that the trip was a one way into the water but not out of the water. The slick shale was too hard to climb over for the animals so they drown here in the water leaving their bones in the bottom of the lake. The cool thing like any lake water will evaporate and more sediment will come to the bottom and this created many layers of animal bones on the lake bed. Eventually the lake dried up and then the area around the dried lake sank leaving the lake as a mound in the terrain. Many thought that the mound should be removed and that is what the developer was going to do to build his houses but the wonderful discovery was found. The find was in 1974 and by 1980 the National Park Service designated “The Mammoth Site” as a National Natural Landmark. During the self guided tour there is a stop that says the team did a core sample to determine the depth and it was stopped at 65 feet down. Now some thing it is deeper than this distance but still that will be tons of bones to find and learn from. The bones are not fossilized or petrified so they are very brittle and many are in-situ or left in the dirt in their original position. The site has bones of animals other than the mammoth but the mammoth is the one that everyone goes crazy over as they are so large. The Mammoth Site is worth a visit for a few hours. They are expanding the area for learning as much of a new building is under construction. If you come during a work day you can see people working on various bones that were taken from the site to preserve them. These bones taken from the site are also put into molds allowing the molds to be studied and not hurt the original bones.
